ESX 5.1 not finding iSCSI Target on Nimble Array

(2) Dell R710's with (2) NICs. I've set port bindings, configured VLAN tagging for storage network. These two physical NIC ports are plugged into ports 5 and 6 respectively on both switches.

(1) Nimble array setup on storage network, set to untagged on HP switches.

I have (2) IBM servers in production that are successfully connected to the Nimble array. For whatever reason the Dell servers using Dynamic Discovery won't connect to the iscsi target. I can statically assign the Nimble array, it will see the array, however when adding luns it hangs. I can ping both the nimble array and the ESX hosts from each device respectively. I've confirmed about a dozen times that the switches are configured the same for the Dell Servers as well as the IBM Servers. I've upgraded from esx 5.0 to 5.1, rebooted the host 6-7 times, removed and added the iSCSI Software Adapter and worked with Nimble support for about 6 hours with no resolution. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Who is Participating?

1) Are your iSCSI cards HBA's or converged NIC?
2) Have you check the BIOS settings on the iSCSI adapter.
3) All all IBM server running the same ISCSI adapter firmware and driver version.
4) From you SAN device are you able to see all ESXi host?
5) I know you are using vlans but are all server connected to the same physical switch?
6) Do you have an extra iSCSI adapater card that you could install in this server as a test?

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Thats just it...Everyhing is on the HCL, nothing is different even checked the firmware on the physical NICS and matched it to the firmware on the IBM Hosts. Everything checks out and should work. The only difference is the servers that aren't connecting are Dell R710's and the ones that are working are IBM's...

I assume vLAN 1 is used for storage network? If so, is the IBM hosts that worked also connect to Ports 1-4 Tagged for VLAN 1? Any different on ESXi host vSwitch and Nic settings between IBM and Dell ESXi hosts?

Nimble storage is on VMware HCL. I have used them.

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myintellinetAuthor Commented: 2013-06-17

Yes that is correct VLAN 1 is tagged on all four hosts as well as ports 1-6 on both HP switches. All the settings are identical on both IBM and Dell.

I learned that after the fact. To change that now would mean recofiguring the environment and bringing down 20 production servers. But even so the IBM servers are configured on VLAN 1 and there are no issues.